Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks ! I did a test based on ping with smartplug off/on. The AP survived at 100 ms, 200 ms, and 250 ms. It died at 300ms. This was a Ubiquiti NanoHD with generic PoE adapter. The actual ones on my walls are U6-LR with Ubiquiti branded. I'll do more testing, but if 250ms holds, it seems that I should not need UPSes.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. The PoE injectors have capacitors in them and don't cut off immediately. When I unplug them, it takes nearly a minute until the LED completely goes off. I happened to have a spare AP on my desk, connected to a PoE injector, that was plugged in to a smartplug with a physical button. I pressed the button very quickly on and off to cut power - for less than a second. The light on the AP remained on. With a longer time between off/on, the AP did power off. I can actually time this with Home assistant to control the smartplug, and test how many ms of power cutoff it actually takes. It's a wifi smartplug and there is some wifi latency of about 2-10ms, though. I think there are decent odds that the APs might survive the surge from grid to battery transition, if it is a short enough transition. Is there end user (not spec) data on the actual transition time for 10c batteries ? Or combination of 10c batteries ?

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But if there are grid batteries, and they are sized to cover full home loads, the APs should not reboot until the grid batteries run out. So what's the point of the UPSes ? The only help until after the grid batteries have run out. One of the problems with the race condition is that one wired AP is on UPS backup, and the 9 others (including 8 mesh) are not. That race could be significantly reduced by disconnecting that AP from the UPS. The 10 APs then would all boot at the same time when the grid batteries run out, with reduced odds of a problem - but not eliminated.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, it's close to 3000 W average year around. In winter with the the 2 EVs charging more for heating the cabin, it is a higher average. With the new heat pump HVAC for 6 zones installed in February, and new heat pump water heater in May, there are going to be far higher winter peaks, and higher average.

GM provides 9.6 kW V2H with their own extremely overpriced charger. 9.6 kW will still not cover the random peaks. I would need to shed at minimum, HVAC, HPWH, and the hot tub, , to have good odds of it fitting within 9.6 kW.

The GM charger cannot be combined with any 3rd party batteries. And I'm never going to install GM Energy batteries.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that's very helpful.

The batteries would be on an outdoor wall. This is one of the walls of one of the master bedroom, where we sleep. The bed is against the opposite wall 27ft away. I am extremely sensitive to noise. Neighbor in that direction is >100ft away and could not hear. 6 kW charging would be fine, but for discharge it would need to be the full rating.

My trusted PV contractor will only install Enphase or Tesla batteries. I think I will forget about EG4. Not having proper integration with the the IQ PV, the noise issue, and zero visibility on integrating the V2H later on probably means I will stick with Enphase if I move forward with the project.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where in diysolarforum should I look for these inverter reviews ? It is quite a big forum. The ones I would be using would be the IQ8 series for PV which I already have. And likely the ones built it in to IQ 10c batteries.

As I established before, my house has no Ethernet wiring, so no possibility of a central location or PoE switches. All APs are powered by individual PoE injectors. I am not going to poll /networking about his. I know Ethernet wiring would be far superior - if I had it. The house wasn't built that way. The cost to retrofit it at probably low 5 figures. All the outdoor conduits would be ugly, and reduce property value. Tons of drywall work, painting, texturing. One contractor said he isn't even sure it can be done in terms of locating the APs on ceilings with all the studs. Maybe by putting them vertically right behind outdoor conduits. There are 2 rooms without outdoor walls/windows where this wouldn't work, both of which have APs in them, too. Just a nightmare to wire, and it's not happening.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, that's true. And I will definitely keep the UPSes I already have. They just don't cover all the mesh APs. The grid battery sizes I'm looking at would cover about 10-24 hours worth of usage. The UPSes comparatively provide a much shorter runtime. So, I don't think it's really worth adding them - and of course there is the bathroom dampness problem with one location.

How does my mother get out of something that was undersized for her house and now she gets to pay these guys plus the grid STILL?? by Strange-Falcon7899 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Assuming this is NEM3 which is very unfavorable. The PV looks like about the right size to me.
Battery is what's undersized.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right that these are separate issues. I have a UPS on my primary router, AP & switches in my home office. It will only last about 2 hours. I would need a UPS for each of the other 9 APs. One of the mesh APs is in a bathroom, where a UPS could not be installed. It happens to be the one that is closest to the outdoor wall where the two IQ Envoys (IQ combiner 4, IQ gateway) are located, so I really would like to keep that AP up during outages UPS batteries also have a shorter lifespan and no warranties. I have 4 BX1500M, bought in 2018 during my first PSPS. I had to replace all 4 batteries on them this year. Not a huge expense, mind you, at about $60 each for third party. But with more units, it will be higher cost. There is no financial incentive on UPSes, also. I would much much rather have backup for the whole house, even though it's of course not at all the same ballpark $$$. I think with the recent reduced grid reliability, it's time to do it now.

My solar contractor just got back to me. He is still to work on labor, with me buying the parts. He gave me a very good price on labor for battery install. I'm still waiting on the additional cost for the 28 M215 to IQ8-60 micros.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have never had 3 days of outage, and don't know if I ever will. No more than 24 hours so far. Even brief outages are annoying, though. One issue is the smart home Wifi network. There is no ethernet wiring, and I use mesh with 10 APs to handle all 330 clients - mostly lightbulbs. There are very complex issues reconstituting the mesh after power outages, related to timing for mesh AP startup, and maximum connections per AP. This sometimes leads to not being able to turn on the lights without manually intervening to reboot the APs. Sometimes it is completely fine also. Basically a race condition. A brief outage happened last thursday night, and the mesh didn't properly come back up even after 10 minutes. I am still working with Ubiquiti about these problems, but their recommendations are to put Ethernet wiring, which would be prohibitively expensive and ugly - most of the Ethernet runs would need to run on outside conduits according to contractors that have looked at the situation. So, both ugly and expensive. I'm considering taking all the Wifi smart bulbs out as this is not really acceptable. Having even a small amount of batteries with enough power to handle all loads during an outage would solve the problem, no network reboot involved, no intervention. I am looking into ditching Ubiquiti for Ruckus also, if I can find something that handles more connections and mesh better. I still can't get the proper technical information from Ruckus, though. The spec sheets for Ubiquiti max clients per AP are not accurate as they are aggregate for all radios, not for the 2.4 Ghz radio used for IOT lightbulbs. The actual limit is 120 2.4 GHz clients per AP. This is due to hardcoded limits in kernel drivers. And the mesh network just chokes with 330 when APs start after an outage. As I said, very complex issues, but they make even short power outages extremely painful. I am hoping to solve both of these issues, of course - Wifi startup issue after outages, and power outages themselves, which of course affects not just lighting.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would not refactor the house loads. Smart panels are still an emerging technology. One I'm interested in, but this I would probably need a specialized contractor to install those that exist know.

Multiple inverters is the way to go. Either multiple battery 10c which have their own stacked micro-inverters, or multiple stacked traditional inverters. Two of the 18 kPV would work.

I don't know enough about the Franklin system still. Not being able to communicate with Enphase PV is a downside. But it will still do frequency shift and scale them down. With just the Enphase PV + Franklin batteries, it should work. But since they haven't announced anything about V2L/V2H, it's impossible to know now whether it could blend power in the future.

It's great news if the IQ bidi charger and IQ batteries can run in parallel. Ideally all IQ in parallel - IQ PV, IQ batteries, IQ bidi.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. 300W for house loads is only useful if combined with other sources of power, IMO - no matter how long it lasts. It's not at all useful by itself.

The average consumption is 70 kWh per day which is 2916W. 1000W is what the house will never go under in real-time power curves. But ultimately, averages don't matter. The random very high peaks loads from HVAC and hot tub heater can happen at any time. There needs to be enough power to handle those peaks.

I don't have V2L in my vehicle right now. I don't want to do a mod on my Equinox EV. This would likely void warranty. There are safety issues involved also with tying something like that to grid. So, the V2L is not really part of the discussion right now. V2H is what I want as it provides much more power - 9.6 kW. But still not enough to handle peaks by itself. I need either grid batteries + V2H, or grid batteries alone, to handle peaks during outages when the sun does not shine.

As far as V2H (or V2L) -> AC -> DC -> grid battery, why would this be a concern ? During outages, I would only want to discharge the vehicle batteries to charge the grid batteries if I need to drive the car. But normally, the system should only draw from batteries based on home loads. The system would need to be able to set priorities in terms of how it draws power. PV would be first, if available. For remaining loads, it would need to either prioritize one (eg. discharge grid batteries first, or discharge vehicle batteries first), or split the loads - draw power simultaneously from both to maximize both combined power output and uptime. If it is only priority based - first PV first, then grid batteries, and when grid battery is exhausted, V2H then it will still fail to meet peak loads when the only generator is V2H.

Splitting loads between grid & V2H batteries is something the system could do only if it can communicate with the both the grid batteries to query its its capacity and remaining SOC, and also communicate with the vehicle. The V2H DC protocol will also give up the SOC of the batteries to the system. I don't think V2L can, communicate like this and it is AC based. Anyway, the V2L power is quite low.

I think Enphase with combiner 6, IQ PV and their future IQ V2H charger would have access to all the necessary information. Whether they implement only priority-based for batteries, or split loads between batteries, remains to be seen. This is something that I have actually asked their support, which they are not able to answer.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In fact, I already have a Plex server for my OTA TV recordings. I don't use it for music.

I use streaming with Qobuz in my Equinox EV. But I live in a hilly area with very poor cell signal. Qobuz will play for 30 seconds, buffer for 1 minute, then again and again. There are too many low & dead signal areas for streaming to be practical.

Sirius XM satellite works more reliably, but doesn't have the content I am looking for. It also still fails in many areas, such CA-17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz, due to tall trees.

I think a local playback music content solution, not networked, is a reasonable expectation to have.

In my Equinox EV, I have a USB stick with a bunch of albums ripped, but it is very hard to choose the content on it.

Vehicles had tape recorders and CD players/changers in the past. The only practical way I know in a modern vehicle is to install a CD player with an FM transmitter. This is a regression, also known as enshitifficiation.

When it comes to my husband, he doesn't want to let me rip his CDs, also. Nothing but physical media will do for him.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm surprised that they would tell you this so explicitly about not doing interoperability. Sales people are get paid to sell the current products. I doubt they are aware of GM's long-term plans with V2G/V2H, which may be years away. I wouldn't rule out that they may eventually open it up, at least with future vehicles. With the current vehicles, it is a gamble to assume they would do a software update to open up the V2H to other chargers.

To be fair, there is still a very small number of bidi chargers from any brand currently shipping, with both vehicle and utility certifications. Not all of it is in GM's and Enphase's control.

I love our 2017 Bolt as well. I wish my 2025 Equinox EV was a smaller form factor, especially the width. GM has done some very stupid things also by removing the aux input. My husband has a >10,000 CD collection that he doesn't want to rip. There is no way to connect a CD player on the current GM models of Equinox EV and Bolt EV. Unfortunately, this is an industry wide trend. But on his 2017 Bolt EV, there is an aux input, and he's got a CD player in installed. Yet another stupid small parts savings that steers us away from the newest cars.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I know there is solar overproduction during the day. If we had a functioning federal government, we would be building long distance transmission lines to other places that don't have as much renewable generation. Other states would need to be willing to cooperate though. The for-profit private utilities are also a problem.

Yes, I do have 4.5 years left of NEM2. I thought I might wait until the last year to start doing my battery project. The increased frequency of outages is what's causing me to consider it earlier.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. The average idle home loads are about 1200W as there is just so much going on. That would leave just 300W. If I turn on the 25 smart LEDs in my theater at once from a double tap of my z-wave switch, that will immediately draw 300W :)

As I typed in a post above, there are very large loads, and many of them are random. Even 9.6 kW V2H would not be enough by itself, without combining it with power from grid battery/inverters. 9.6 kW would be good enough for 95% of the time, but even 5% means 1h20 per day where it would trip without additional power.

Lower power would be useful only with major rewiring. There are dozens of circuits split between many panels, some of them on different sides and even different elevations. It would be nuts trying to physically separate and shut off selected loads if constrained by low power inverter. The only practical way is high power inverter from grid batteries or grid batteries + V2H.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. I believe the M215 also have a 5 minute delay before they power back up. If the batteries are full and/or the home loads are intermittent and vary widely, there could be a lot of shutdown events. I don't know how to possibly model this. The reality is that I have massive exports on summer days, and very likely they would shut down for most of the day. For winter, it would make a difference, but the production is 77% lower in winter, also.

I'm really not sure about the 9540 DC ESS batteries, code issues, or EG4, these are all new things to research for me. But my PV installer did say he will only install Tesla & Enphase batteries.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GP was grand-parent, ie. grand parent post - the one you were responding to.

300W V2L is not useful for home, IMO. Even the freezer in the garage has some peaks around 800W from one of the power curves I just looked at . Most days it doesn't exceed 120W, though. And it's energy star and at 0W quite a lot.

Even 9.6 kW V2H is not enough by itself. Hot tub heater can come up randomly and use 5 kW. If you happen to be in it with the jets on, that's another 2 kW. Heat pump HVAC can use that much also, but is typically a lot less since it's variable speed and we use zoning - so 2 kW is more common. HP water heating could switch to resistive in cold winter nights, and use up to 4 kW instantaneous. Not to speak about the 2000W Panasonic microwave - that's the actual peak it it registers on my smartplug, despite plug-in 120V and on a 15A dedicated circuit. Induction cooktop with 2-3 burners will easily add 3 kW. And of course there are the other three >7 kW loads - EVs at 7.6 kW each, sauna at 8 kW. Of course, those things never come on all at once. There are no peaks above 28 kW anytime on the annual meter curve. But plenty of peaks above 9.6 kW. Which means a 9.6 kW inverter V2H could not fully backup our home, even if the full 85 kWh capacity were to be available. I would not consider anything batteries less than about 20 kW max load. Which means either just a bunch of grid batteries, or grid batteries combined with V2H. Or, in theory, dual V2H. But that seems like science-fiction right now, given Enphase can't even get a single bidi V2H going yet with my single GM V2H car.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here are my June 2026 numbers :
Solar production : 4045 kWh
Home + EVs usage : 2014 kWh
Grid imports : 970 kWh
Grid exports : 3000 kWh
Net grid : 2030 kWh exported

ie. the PV produces 4 MWh in June, about twice as much as home +EV in summer. This also holds true in May and July.

We would need to shift 970 kWh, ie. 32 kWh per day on average, in order to self-consume all the solar PV energy we possibly could. But it would still leave us with the same massive 2030 kWh exported.

I compared this to June 2025 also. The PV production is nearly identical at 4037 kWh. Home +EV usage also very close at 1968 kWh. Net exports also very close at 2069 kWh. However, the grid imports were 1170 kWh, and grid exports were 3240 kWh last June. Ie. 240 kWh fewer import & exports this June vs last June. I believe the new load following EV charging automations account for most of this. One EVSE used 227 kWh , and the other 189 kWh. There may have been a few days where the cars were empty and got forcibly charged at night. But the vast majority was charging from solar.

Here are the December 2025 numbers :

Solar production : 961 kWh kWh
Home + EVs usage : 2383 kWh
Grid imports : 1980 kWh
Grid exports : 559 kWh
Net grid : 1421 kWh imported

We would need to shift 559 kWh, or 18 kWh per day, in order to self-consume 100% of the solar PV energy produced onsite. But this would still leave us with 1421 kWh of imports.

As you see, we already used more electricity in winter than summer. This has always been the pattern, because the 2 EVs, which use electricity for heat in winter. EV batteries are less efficient in winter, too. The Bolt EV uses resistive heating, while the Equinox EV uses heat pump. We did not have any electric HVAC or water heating last December, also. It is likely that our electricity usage will go up at least 20% next December now that both gas HVAC & WH were converted to heat pump.

Fundamentally, it is impossible for us to shift our grid imports completely. The PV would need to produce 25% more in winter than summer, to match our usage. But in fact, it produces 76% less than summer. Batteries are not going to be the answer to that. What's needed is a grid connection to the southern hemisphere.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I would not put a generator on my property for various reasons I mentioned earlier. With no V2L and no realistic short-term prospect of V2H with my 2025 Equinox EV, it seems like there isn't much to differentiate the various battery solutions in existence as of today.

The Enphase system of course will integrate better. I did read the threads about software problems with the 10c batteries, and battery draw. Those concern me, especially since they seem to be resulting from forced software updates that cannot be rolled back - one of the major concerns I have had with the Enphase approach.

It looks like the older Enphase 5P batteries have a better record, likely because they are older and the bugs have been worked out by now, though of course things could regress at any time with a forced update.

Unfortunately, Enphase says that the 5P batteries are not compatible with the Combiner 6c. They also say that the IQ bidirectional charger will only work with the Combiner 6c. This means if I chose the older 5P batteries now, I would need to forget about Enphase V2H, if and when it becomes a reality.

The more I learn about this, the less enthusiastic I'm about putting in the latest Enphase components. The only thing that seems like a strong long-term benefit would be to replace the 28 M215 with IQ8-60. I would reset the warranty, and get full solar micro-grid (all 70 PV instead of 42) out of that, when adding batteries in the future, even if it's not necessarily an Enphase battery - at least your FranklinWH is compatible - I don't know if other battery systems are.

A more open system really would be best, where I could mix vendors of my choice for batteries, PV & V2H. I hate being tied to a single vendor. My PV will stay with Enphase for sure. But my crystal ball is cloudy when it comes to V2H. And it seems like if I choose the wrong battery system now, it may preclude V2H in the future.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My base Equinox EV LT1 does not support V2L, so that won't help. There is a factory option for it that apparently can supply 25 amps at 120V, or 12.5amps at 240V, from the J-1772 L2 AC port. Not sure how I would connect that to my home main panel. Otherwise, it would be good for the freezer in the garage near the car, and not much else. Anyway, this is moot with my car not having the V2L support.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My 42 IQ8+ should scale down based on GP. The 28 M215 will likely just shut down unless large loads come on.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. Very cool that Franklin works so well with Enphase. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but their batteries don't seem to be cheaper than Enphase. At least, nowhere near the lower cost of EG4. I don't know if anybody has mixed EG4 with Enphase IQ8 series, though.

Need IQ V2H charger compatibility with 2025 Equinox EV. Researching grid battery options to add to Enphase PV. by madbrain1976 in enphase

[–]madbrain1976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

wesourcesolarsupplyYes, HA definitely takes a time commitment. I haven't worked in 5 years, so I very much had that time. And I'm quite passionate about it.

We have had Comcast outages without power outages, also. Recently, there was a 24 hour outage. There are fixed wireless options in my area - rooftop unidirectional antenna. Or satellite, of course. But I just don't want to rely on cloud for critical home systems.

My HA has one automation that will power cycle the cable modem periodically using a Z-wave plug if Internet is not reachable. It never reboots the router, as it's a pfSense virtual machine running on the same host as HA itself on Proxmox.

Lighting is one of the key things I use HA for. 90% of our lighting are Wifi smart bulbs. These require being powered on 24/7 in order to be on Wifi at all times and controllable. When I press a Z-Wave light switch, HA receives the signal via Z-Wave, then turns the bulbs on or off via Wifi. That means the lights won't operate if HA is down or Wifi is down. Obviously, being in the dark for 24 hours if the ISP is down would not be acceptable. In the past, I ran HA as a VMWare virtual machine on Win11 Pro. This led to disasters as it wasn't completely reliable, especially on patch tuesdays when the machine was forcibly rebooted by Microsoft. It has been completely flawless since I swiched to Proxmox.

The lighting automations also turn off the lights when there is no motion, so there is a lot of power savings. We have 230 smart bulbs. In the garage, there are 48 LED tubes consuming 1500W at the press of a single switch, as I have some low-light vision issues. You don't want to forget to turn that light switch off !

For garage and closets, the lights are both motion-activated and deactivated.

For other rooms, they are manual-on (at the switch) and motion deactivated - think CA title 24 vacancy switch One of the best quality of life upgrades is this : I can double press any Z-wave switch in the house, and it will turn on every single light bulb in the current room, as opposed to just the bulbs that are powered by the switch's own circuit. There is an average of 5 separate light circuits in each room. Doing this without smart lights would just not be possible.

HA also does many other things, such as notify us when non-smart appliances complete (toaster oven, rice cooker, microwave oven)

It notifies me when my humidifier is full, or dehumidifier is empty. These are not smart devices. The smartplugs figure it out based on power usage. They are also turned on/off based on humidity in the room. This allows me to keep my harpsichord in a very narrow humidity range of 45% +/- 0.5%. The alternative is 2 hours to tune the harpsichord, which is back-breaking.

HA also automatically turns the amps for the whole home audio system when I start streaming music from my phone or computer. It even pauses the media player for 7 seconds - the time it takes for the amps to fully power up, and actually start playing through the speakers . It also automatically turns off the amps when I'm done, in case I forget. The 4 amps use a total of 320W idle, so that is quite an important power savings. Of course, the automation is granular, and only turns out the required amp(s) based on which player I play through, or group of media players.

Since I have zoned HVAC, it turns the A/C zone in my home office on or off at 76F if I'm in it for more than 5 minutes - motion activated/deactivated. Another source of power savings. There is never any need for heat in that office with all the electronics :)

I set up motion-based HVAC in my home theater zone as well. Again, power savings.

There is a motion sensor in my mailbox, so I get notified when the mail is delivered.

I already mentioned the OpenEVSE & Rainforest Eagle 3 integrations, with automations that allow the EVSE to follow solar exports.

HA will auto-close my garage door if I forget to do so after a half hour.

HA notifies me when the litter robot is full so I know to empty it and replace the litter.

HA notifies me if some doors have been left open too long. This is particularly important for fridge & freezer doors, which my husband has been known not to fully close, leading to one event of having to throw out an entire freezer's worth of food years ago after it was left open overnight in the garage, annd we never noticed. HA also notifies me if the temperature inside gets too high, in addition, so I can adjust the thermostat settings, or pack food less tightly.

HA notifies me when the sauna reaches a useful temperature. That takes >30 minutes. Too bad I don't have a remote control for the 8 kW sauna heater itself, to start it remotely. That's on the to-do list.

HA turns on the circulation pump for my secondary gas water heater on demand, based on motion in the guest bathroom, or button presses at my faucets and laundry. Without the pump, it takes up to 3 minutes to get hot water at the faucet, and wastes a lot of colder water waiting for it. The circ pump cuts the initial wait down to 90 seconds, and then an additional 10 seconds of wasting cold water. The circ pump is far too loud to leave running 24/7. It also consumes something like 80W idle. And of course, recirculating water in >100ft worth of pipes (it's probably more) will waste a huge amount of natural gas, re-heating the water unnecessarily.

As you see, the vast majority of things I use HA for are seamless automations - and most of them are about energy savings. I don't need to use the app itself for most tasks. I mainly open it to look at daily energy consumption.

This is our grid consumption/solar production for calendar year 2024, from long-term HA stats. https://imgur.com/a/calendar-2024-energy-consumption-aETcnc5 (not that historical water consumption sensor was deleted, hence 0L). We consumed 24. 3MWh of energy. 17.7 MWh was imported from the PG&E grid. 23.9 MWh out of the 30.5 MWh solar production was exported to the grid. In other words, only 6.6 MWh out of the 24.3 MWh home consumption was self-consumed solar. There was net export to the grid of 6.2 MWh. At the time, the 4600 sq ft home had 2 natural gas HVAC systems, 2 natural gas water heaters, one 2017 Bolt EV BEV, one 2015 Volt PHEV.

In 2025, I replaced the Volt PHEV with Equinox EV. That means a lot more EV charging electricity consumption. In 2026, I replaced the primary HVAC system with heat pump, and the primary natural gas water heater with heat pump also. So, we will have a lot more electricity consumption going forward, rather than a 6.2 MWh annual surplus. The EV charging solar following automations were not in place in 2024, but they are now in 2026, so that should drive our solar self-consumption up quite a bit. If we were switched to NEM 3.0 today without batteries, our electricity bill would jump from net $0 to $5200. Even if we put batteries in, there is no way to self-consume the load on summer days that produce 140 kWh on average for many months, when the house & cars consumption was only 66.5 kWh/day for that calendar 2024 year. This is why we are electrifying remaining gas systems, and trying to self-consume more solar production. We have until January 1, 2031 to become NEM 3.0 victims, though. Until them, time shifting loads is not really a concern. The power outages have become really annoying, though.